As a huge fan of both It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Charlie Day as an actor and person, my expectations were set perhaps a touch too high for his directorial feature debut “Fool’s Paradise”. I found the trailers to be fine, it seemed like it’d be a fun time even if it wound up lacking an abundance of heart and substance like many US comedies seem to (particularly nowadays for the most part).
Unfortunately, I can’t even give the film the weak but ultimately fair compliment of being entertaining; it’s a poor, hollow, unfunny amalgamation of great concepts that fall completely flat in almost every area you could imagine. Not everything is outright bad here, seems as there is a lot to enjoy. The issue with that is that as much as there is a lot to like here, it’s all so unsubstantial and minor that it never adds up to much.
It’s various celebrity cameos were fun to spot and usually stuck the landing (there are some wonderful Leonardo DiCaprio in “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” meme-esque moments for those who love “Sunny”, like myself) and Day himself is fantastic. He might not be giving a huge career-defining performance, but his physical comedy works well and he managed to carry some scenes where the writing and humour weren’t terrible. On top of that, his directing is genuinely effective, with the visual aesthetic he translates over to the screen and the majority of performances he’s getting out of his actors.
There isn’t much positive to say about Fool’s Paradise overall, which is all the more a shame when it comes down to Charlie Day being far and wide the best thing about the film…as well as the worst.
1.5 / 5